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Emotional Control Circuit of Brain’s Fear Response Discovered |
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Written by Columbia University
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Researchers have identified an emotional control circuit in the human brain which keeps emotionally intense stimuli from interfering with mental functioning. These results significantly enhance our understanding of the neurobiology underlying psychiatric disorders involving emotional control, such as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression. The research employed a novel test in which subjects were forced to detect and resolve attentional conflict created by emotionally powerful stimuli. Brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that can detect moment-to-moment changes in neural activity. fMRI is a version of the widely-used clinical MRI scanning technique. The study, which is published in the Sept 21, 2006 issue of Neuron, was led by a Columbia University Medical Center M.D./Ph.D. student, Amit Etkin, who explained that, “Tremendous knowledge exists about how our brains deal with cognitive distractions, but we know very little about how we deal with emotional distractions. This is something we constantly do in our everyday lives, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by every emotional trigger we encounter.” |
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How to make Better Decisions |
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Written by Leonard Holmes, Ph.D.
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Good decisions are made "with the head and the heart". Recent research has shown that we make better decisions when we use our conscious mind together with our unconscious mind. Researchers in Denmark studied decisions made by people when they were allowed to think about their choices and compared this to decisions made when they were distracted and not allowed to consciously think about their choices. People actually made better decisions when they had been distracted - when the decision was heavily influenced by their "unconscious mind". We seem to be better able to hold multiple options in our unconscious mind and process them "in the background." Our consious mind can only attend to one or two things at a time Follow these steps if you are faced with a major decision in your life. - Before you start narrowing down options be sure you have considered all of them. It often helps to spend some time brainstorming. Are there options you haven't considered? What else might you do?
- Start with a blank piece of paper and write down everything you can think of related to your decision. Focus on generating possibilities without being critical
- After generating different options, put the piece of paper away and go do something else. Watch a movie; read a book; or literally sleep on it - go to sleep for the night.
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Obesity Linked with Mood and Anxiety Disorders |
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Written by NIMH
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Results of an NIMH-funded study show that nearly one out of four cases of obesity is associated with a mood or anxiety disorder, but the causal relationship and complex interplay between the two is still unclear. The study is based on data compiled from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, a nationally representative, face-to-face household survey of 9,282 U.S. adults, conducted in 2001-2003. It was published in the July 3, 2006, issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. The results appear to support what other studies have found—that obesity, which is on the rise in the United States, is associated with increasing rates of major depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder and other disorders. However, in contrast to other studies, this study found no significant differences in the rates between men and women. In addition, it found that obesity was associated with a 25 percent lower lifetime risk of having a substance abuse disorder. Obesity is defined as having a body mass index of 30 or more. |
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